Yeah, I was all excited about a new Strider game until I saw the developer's most recent work was Battleship. Seriously Capcom, you're trying to sell this to people with fond memories of Strider. Those people are going to be hardcore gamers that expect and demand quality. If you're going to just hand it to a shovelware team, you might as well not bother. Hell, WayForward's a multi-team studio, give it to them!

Redmask wrote on Jul 13, 2013, 10:16:People will defend anything on the internet *shakes head*

Yeah, like the basic principle of law. Or being a bit confused at the crap people post on the web. Just because 1 or 2 dudes are assholes doesn't mean everyone in that country or company is one.

But don't let the hate train stop on my account ;p

Also that you know, people are innocent until proven guilty and all that.

The guy was also instantly fired as soon as he was arrested (which could bite Precursor if he ends up being acquitted) so he's not involved any more. I don't plan to contribute to this for other reasons but yeah, if one guy getting accused of a crime is enough to turn you off the project, you might as well stop consuming all media.

So they're going to TOTALLY become more accurate with digital sales but openly admit they won't be tracking everyone (very likely Steam isn't a part of this since they don't give numbers to anyone) and won't say who their partners are. In other words, this report is still largely useless and irrelevant as it has been for years. But GamesIndustry International loves two things: NPD and analyst quotes. Not surprised to see them hyping this up.

Okay, Blackberry, time to call it quits. If you get outsold by the fucking WINDOWS PHONE, there really is no justification for your existence anymore.

Creston

RIM (now BlackBerry Inc. I guess) is still very successful in government and enterprise. They've lost the consumer market though and did a long time ago. They need to give that up and focus on their core markets. If they do that, they can continue to thrive in their little niche. They'll never be top dog again but they can survive and do fine. We still use BlackBerries at my work (against my objections) and I got a Z10 to demo a couple months back. They're actually really nice devices and BB10 is a really good operating system. They just still can't figure out how to get people to support it. My girlfriend also has a Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8 is a really solid OS, just again, they need to get people writing apps for it.

Android's come a long way but still isn't mainstream friendly. And well, Apple's still riding a fashion trend with an OS that's basically Windows 3.1 interface wise compared to the competition. iOS 7 looks horrendous from what I've seen of it. But their popularity is already peaking and they'll plateau soon enough. It's hard to attain long-term, sustainable success in the fashion business which is what Apple has been in since 2007.

Shortly after Microsoft and Sony held their E3 press conferences on June 10, GameStop had pre-order SKUs in their system for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 respectively. With price points and launch windows announced, both systems were available for consumers to reserve almost immediately. Just over a week later, the pre-order SKU for Xbox One has been removed from GameStop’s system corporate-wide without explanation.

As of this morning, GameStop management has confirmed that they are not currently taking reserves on Xbox One. No official explanation has been given for the removal of the SKU at this time, and GameStop has not clarified whether or not they will re-open the reserve list at a later time. PlayStation 4 is still available for reserve, and Sony recently announced that GameStop has pledged to buy every PlayStation 4 they can get their hands on.

Man, MS is just F'd in the A.

From what I've read elsewhere, this is because GameStop ran out their launch allocation. Amazon had a similar thing happen with the PS4 until Sony promised to ship more units to them. Some are also speculating that Microsoft's having major component yield problems with the Xbox One and there may not be that many of them available at launch as a result.

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Jun 18, 2013, 13:24:@ASeven - I don't see why you like that reply, as it completely misses the point. NPD's software report is dependent upon only the physical sales in the US. That means not only does it ignore Europe (which surpassed the US in video game sales more than five years ago) but also digital distribution, which makes up a significant portion of the market (if not the majority). As for the hardware numbers, of course they'll be reported as they're still accurate (at least a lot more so than the software numbers).

Software sales haven't declined by 44% since 2000 and the fact that NPD suggests that's the case demonstrates how hopelessly inaccurate it is.

ASeven has been toting this doom and gloom narrative for a while now, referencing things like the '83 crash while providing no evidence of his own and only pointing to this NPD report which was rendered all but irrelevant years ago. I've no idea why and obviously, to say the industry doesn't have some major problems right now is to ignore reality. But the degree to which he's insisting everything is collapsing right now is specious at best, especially considering software drops like this that are 1) in a month where there weren't many big new releases and 2) are this far into the end of a hardware generation and perfectly normal and expected. That software sales are down isn't as huge an issue as you might think if it's what the industry projected and planned around which by all accounts, is what's happening.

But some people get off on watching things fail. I can't wait to see what he says when the industry wakes up and realises that the mobile space so many are calling the saviour of gaming is even more hit driven than AAA and that if you aren't an outlier like Rovio, you have almost no chance of making real money in that space.

NPD has been a source of cheap, clicks-through-controversy stories for years now. I applaud Gamasutra for stepping up and having the balls to call it what it is: Useless as a barometer of industry health. This is the site that's run extensive charts on NPD before and regularly touts the whole "all gaming will be on tablets and social networks in 5 years" nonsense. Dropping NPD certainly doesn't do them any favours. Except you know, actually looking a bit more like actual journalists.

HoSpanky wrote on Jun 17, 2013, 16:46:Absolution can't have sold well, the game dropped to ~$20 in what seemed like a few weeks. I haven't played any of the hitman games so I can't comment on their quality. Obviously people liked them or they wouldn't have made what..4 or 5 games and a derpy movie.

It sold almost 4M copies but the idiots at Square Enix expected it to sell something like 6M. These are the same executives who called Tomb Raider a failure despite it selling more than any previous iteration in franchise history ever did.

Unreal. Interplay's a shell company that solely exists so the scumbag Caen brothers can continue to draw a paycheque from the company they looted and razed. They're in worse financial shape than THQ was when they went bankrupt, they've just kept the company as a husk rather than letting it go under. Of all the companies that bought THQ IP, no one could have found the change in their couch cushions to buy FreeSpace for $7,500? Hell, having the rights to GOG releases alone would probably make that back in no time. Mind boggling.

This is really weird. It's been out for so long on consoles and I think the sequel is due this year maybe? Very weird for it to come to PC now. I've heard and seen things about this game that might make it interest me (despite it apparently being several hours too long) and if it looks better and runs better on PC, that's definitely the way to play it. I'll probably pick it up if the price is right.

Cutter wrote on Jun 3, 2013, 21:57:It's like you can hear the rats scurrying off that sinking ship. You'd have to be nuts not to have been looking for another job for ages now if you worked for them.

My friend's mobile company was bought by them (renamed "Zynga Toronto") and he has only good things to say about Zynga. Their software engineers are the highest paid in the entire industry and their stock is doing very well and will only get better.

Everyone who got bought by Zynga had good things to say about them until their teams were gutted and the stock options they were largely acquired with ended up being worth a fraction of what the company IPO'd at. It's good that your friend has largely avoided the axe for now but at the rate Zynga's going, it's only a matter of time.

Julio wrote on May 24, 2013, 11:03:It's an insult to Vista to lump it in with Windows 8. Vista>Windows 8...

I'm no fan of vanilla Windows 8 but Windows 8 with Classic Shell beats the pants off Vista and even Windows 7 in many ways. That Start Screen is madness though. At least the 8.1 update gives the choices back. It may have been an arrogant move but they are at least owning up to it in some form. Finally.

If Microsoft was doing something like this (artificially constraining supply to manipulate prices), they'd already be in court over it. Between this and the amount of articles defending Apple's tax avoidance strategies under the excuse "Well Microsoft does it too!", it's clear the incredible double standard for Apple in the press is alive and well.

NKD wrote on May 18, 2013, 13:03:The real reason Cutter thinks he's always right is that every time he is right, he points it out. Every time he is wrong, no one gives enough fucks to call him on it. Someone could literally go through his post history and list hundreds of times he was wrong, but he knows no one is going to waste that kind of time on him.

Plus, like you said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. If you say everything sucks and everything is going to fail in an industry wher e most things do suck, and most things do fail, you're hardly showing any kind of special insight. You're just making the safe bet.

NegaDeath wrote on May 18, 2013, 16:03:Its a bit ironic hearing that from a developer that just had massive layoffs.

Not to mention them calling another company the walking dead...

Yeah, that's what I find funny. I own a Wii U and love it but yeah, there are many valid concerns about its future, though I do think it's WAY too early to call it dead yet. People said the same thing about the DS and 3DS and both are doing very well now.

The irony is just a guy from EA calling Nintendo the walking dead. Nintendo's been around 100 years and only started losing money for the first time ever two years ago and is now showing a profit again, even with the Wii U's horrible numbers. EA just canned 10% of its workforce and were it not for the buckets of money it's making from selling mobile cow clickers to people who wouldn't know a quality game if it bit them in the ass, they'd probably be in way worse shape than they are now.